French economist Thomas Piketty is a puzzled man. Him and other economist across the world are at pain to explain why the South Africa’s ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ programme that was meant to bridge inequality between the rich mostly whites and poor blacks has done the exact opposite.

“Of course now we are 25 years after the fall of apartheid … [but] inequality is not only still very high in South Africa, but has been rising and in some ways income inequality is even higher today than 20 years ago. This is something we want to better understand,” Piketty told the audience at the University of Johannesburg campus.

In his bestselling book, ‘Capital in the 21st Century’, he addresses this particular problem on a global scale by arguing that the rich will always get richer and the poor  get poorer.

Speaking at the annual Nelson Mandela lecture last weekend, Piketty drew a comparison between South Africa and his native France, which was the first European nation to introduce political equality but one of the last to accept policies against economic inequality.

He outlined why he thinks South Africa is still so dramatically unequal – and suggests a few things that can be done about it.

“In a way, the inequality regime that existed under apartheid was much more oppressive and violent than the ancient regime in France. The group that had more rights than the rest of the population, namely the whites, was much bigger. It was not one percent of the population; it was 10-15 percent, so it’s more difficult to deal with a situation like this than if it’s one percent.”